


Sometime

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Banter, Bickering, Boarding School, Huddling For Warmth, Kissing, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 10:49:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18737512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Chidder wakes Teppic up on a very cold night.Teppic doesn't really have it in him to be annoyed - Chidder doesn't really give him the time.





	Sometime

Pteppicymon XXVIII stirred in his bed, squinting into the deep, velvet darkness of his bedroom. He was very frustrated. It was a freezing winter’s night in Ankh-Morpork, and he had lain in his bed shivering, even with the fire lit and the door closed and a hot water bottle warming his belly: hours had ticked by before he had finally gotten to sleep, and _now_?

A noise had woken him up.

Young Assassins had their own bedrooms. It was simply easier than dormitories, in the scheme of things: although in recent years, the tendency of the students and guild members to murder one another in their beds had faded somewhat under the capable command of Doctor Cruces, and then especially under Lord Downey, one still liked to avoid the mess and bother of schoolboy pranks.

It hardly mattered whether it was a pool of blood or a pool of something more embarrassing, intended to humiliate: it was best to keep these things to individual rooms, rather than allowing them to happen in a dormitory, where many people might be disturbed from their sleep at once.

“Hm?” Teppic asked the darkness, sleepily.

“Dreadfully cold, my boy,” said the voice of Chidder, somewhat close to Teppic’s bed, and Teppic groaned, dropping his head back onto his pillow and huddling in his blankets. It was cold. It had taken him ages to get to sleep, even in the thick flannel of his pyjamas, which had actually been a gift from Chidder this Hogswatch[1], and the thick fur blanket.

“Go away,” Teppic grumbled.

“No,” Chidder said, and Teppic felt the mattress shift as Chidder slipped into the bed beside him. Six years being schooled alongside Chidder had left Teppic somewhat used to his self-confidence even in the most bizarre behaviour, but this was a bit beyond the pale.

“ _Chidder!”_

“Gods, you’re warm,” Chidder said into Teppic’s hair, his chest – which was broader and, Teppic had noticed in recent months, somewhat hairier than Teppic’s own – pressing up against Teppic’s back, and one of his arms drawing tightly around Teppic’s own chest. Teppic almost struggled, but then he took a moment’s pause. _Chidder_ was quite warm himself, actually. His body, beefy and heavy like a tom cat’s, even as it retained a wiry grace, was different to Teppic’s own, which was leaner, and more compact. Even if Teppic was taller[2], Chidder was _bigger_ , and, apparently, a good deal better at retaining some of the heat in that big body of his. “Are you wearing your _socks_?”

“I was cold,” Teppic mumbled.

“Yeah, but can you _sleep_ like that, Tep?”

“I managed it before _you_ woke me up, didn’t I?” Teppic demanded, his voice a bit sharper than he meant for it to be, but he let his hand touch against Chidder’s arm where it wrapped around him, feeling the hair that grew there. Chidder was _hairy_. The royal family of Djelibeybi, of course, had body hair, but it was much sparser and lighter, and Teppic only grew thick patches of it at his crotch, on his head, and a little in his armpits, but Chidder? Chidder was like a _bear_. He was only going to get hairier, he had said to Arthur when the other boy had brought it up in the school sauna, but Teppic hardly knew how: touching his arm, now, he felt a veritable forest of surprisingly soft hair along Chidder’s arm.

“Kick ‘em off,” Chidder murmured. His breath was hot on the back of Teppic’s neck.

“I’ll kick _you_ off,” Teppic said.

“Well, you haven’t yet,” Chidder pointed out, but his retort was playful in tone, and Teppic caught his toe in the ankle of the sock, reluctantly dragging it off. “You can put it against my calf.”

“I’m not having a calf in the bed as well,” Teppic muttered, even as he did so, and sighed at the warmth of Chidder’s hirsutely carpeted leg, _radiating_ through his sole and making his freezing toes sting with abrupt heat.

“Just a kid then,” Chidder murmured, and Teppic heard his smug little laugh as Teppic shoved both his feet up against Chidder’s calves, shoving up his pyjama bottoms in order to reach. “Feeling warmer?”

“Mmm,” Teppic hummed, his eye closing, and he let his fingers curve around Chidder’s wrist. It occurred to him, in that lazy and yet utterly comprehensive way ideas sometimes do, when one is half-asleep, that this was very unusual. It was, perhaps, even a dream, although Teppic wasn’t sure about that: Chidder’s body felt far too wonderfully warm against his own, and he didn’t know that he’d make it quite so pleasant, were he dreaming it up. Young men weren’t meant to warm the beds of princes – not to actually _warm_ them, anyway—

The thought zapped Teppic somewhat awake, and he coughed.

“I’ve been thinking,” Chidder said.

“That’s novel,” Teppic said.

“ _Naughty_ ,” Chidder purred in his ear, squeezing him across his chest, and Teppic felt a strangely electric heat run down his spine. “No, no, I’ve been _thinking_ , Tep. We should have sex.”

There was a long pause as Teppic took this in, wide-eyed in the darkness, very, very aware of Chidder’s size, his even breathing, his warmth. “ _Now_?” he asked, finally.

“No, not _now_ ,” Chidder murmured, nosing against the back of his ear and making Teppic’s eyes flutter shut. Teppic thought of Chidder, going home with girls – going home with _women_ – at dances, charming them, being charming— “It’s far too cold for that sort of thing, Tep. I’d need to undress you, and then get you all wet and slippery to play with. You’d freeze, afterward.”

The words _wet and slippery_ , not heretofore words that had been filed under “sexually appealing” in Teppic’s mind, were now blaring as if the words had been written in fire on the inside of his skull – and, quite possibly, on the inside of his belly, where another blaze was coming abruptly to life.

“But… _sometime_ ,” Chidder said.

The cogs that made up Teppic’s mind had been somewhat overlubricated by Chidder’s warm voice in his ear, and were struggling with logical thought, in the moment. Visions of Chidder in various situations wet and/or slippery were making themselves known to him in ways they had never done before, and Chidder was rather rudely taking the place of men and women who, in previous fantasies, had been quite faceless.

“Is this, er,” Teppic began, his tongue feeling clumsy, fat, and stupid behind his teeth, “sort of thing, where you want to teach me how to be seductive? As a… a skill, or something?”

“Not really,” Chidder said, his tone musing. “I just thought it might be rather fun. Besides, I hear it’s rather nice, when you do it with someone you actually love.”

“Love?” Teppic repeated, his voice somewhat choked.

“Well,” Chidder adjusted, not sounding bothered at all, his confidence never faltering, “I suppose _love_ is the wrong word… but I rather like you, at times. I think I could come to like you quite a bit more, lying down.”

“I’m not feeling very _seduced_ , Chidder,” Teppic said, surprised by the affront in his own tone.

“Whatever do I want to seduce you for?”

“To have sex with me! It’s all very well seducing women, Chiddy, but I’m rather offended if you don’t think I’m worth the effort, and you can just swan into my bed, all warm, and propose sex as if you’re asking me to lend you a fiver.”

“ _Would_ you lend me a fiver?” Chidder asked, sounding amused, and Teppic elbowed him in his flat – but comparatively soft, not like Teppic’s, which was very hard indeed – stomach. Chidder grunted in pain. “You’re not a _woman_ , Teppic,” he said reproachfully.

“No, I’m a _prince_ ,” Teppic retorted. “I shan’t just be— Just be, sort of, _had_.”

“Well, you’re not having _me_ ,” Chidder said. “I’m bigger than you.”

“What? That’s not what I meant,” Teppic said, feeling a hot flush burn in his cheeks. He knew, of course, how it worked, theoretically, but he’d never put much thought into the _practicality_ of it… And he’d be damned if he’d allow such thoughts to distract him now. “No, I meant— I shall be _seduced_ , Chidder, if it’s all the same to you.”

Chidder exhaled against the back of his neck, and then wriggled closer, nosing past the locks of Teppic’s hair, although he was, frankly, getting rather frustrated with growing it out, and was rather close to cutting it all short again. He was _especially_ amenable to that sort of prospect, if it meant Chidder’s mouth was going to drag against the small of his neck like that.

“Fine,” Chidder said, and kissed him there. “I’ll seduce you. Very _demanding_ , for a prince.”

“ _Com_ manding.”

“Come, is it?”

Teppic snorted, and Chidder laughed, rich and honeyed against his hair, and then he went relaxed and quiet, pulling Teppic in against him. Teppic’s feet weren’t cold at all, anymore, and Chidder _was_ very warm. He turned over in his place, and shoved Chidder onto his beck, so that he could use him as a pillow.

He was a very _good_ pillow, and better than that, Chidder’s hand was stroking idly up and down Teppic’s back.

He was asleep a lot faster, this time around.

 

[1] He had informed Chidder that he didn’t celebrate the holiday, but Chidder had assured him, with his typical self-confidence, that that was hardly the point.

[2] Which, at the moment, he was, by almost a half inch!

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). You can send requests [on Tumblr](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask), too. Requests always open.
> 
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